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Alumni Speaker Series: "Mezcal in Oaxaca" Book PresentationDate: Friday January 30, 2026
Time: 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Location: SRH 1.313, LLILAS Hackett Room
The LLILAS Alumni Speaker series is pleased to present a talk by Dr. Ronda Brulotte on her latest book, Mezcal in Oaxaca: A Craft Spirit for the Global Marketplace. Dr. Brulotte will be in conversation with LLILAS faculty affiliate Dr. Seth Garfield, professor in the Department of History.
In her latest book, Ronda L. Brulotte traces mezcal’s swift rise and its effects on communities that have distilled and enjoyed the beverage for generations. Only in the late 1990s did mezcal begin to escape its longstanding associations with Indigenous and working-class life, even as these very qualities supply the “authenticity” that elite consumers crave. Through a detailed ethnography of the spirits industry in Oaxaca, Brulotte compares the ideal of the artisanal economy with the reality of participation in global markets. Her findings—focused on tourism-led development and gentrification, the exploitation of women and smallholders, and swelling regional migration pressures—raise troubling questions about the ecological and social sustainability of a new craft imaginary that rebrands rustic products as luxury goods.
About the Speaker
Ronda Brulotte is an interdisciplinary scholar with training in sociocultural anthropology and Latin American Studies whose research focuses on craft economies. She is professor and department chair in Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of New Mexico, where she has also served as Associate Director for Academic Programs at the Latin American and Iberian Institute. Dr. Brulotte earned her master's at LLILAS in 1999 and her PhD in Anthropology in 2006 from UT Austin.
Free and open to the public. Light lunch served. For more information, contact Paloma Díaz. <p.diaz />
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